Prologue: Rebel, Or Perish Like A Dog?
"To cultivate is to rebel against the heavens," Qian Shanyi lectured, "This principle lies at the heart of all orthodox cultivation."
She looked around the sunlit lecture room, making sure her audience was following along. She was the only cultivator there, seated on a wide pillow in front of a low table holding her personal tea set. Two dozen students - most of them men, ranging from as young as ten to as old as forty - kneeled in front of her on smaller pillows, dressed in the gray robes of outer disciples. All of them were new to the sect, and she was supposed to teach them about the world of cultivation. A good third of them fidgeted, clearly unnerved at being in the same room as an actual cultivator. They would adjust quickly enough.
Out of all her duties in the Luminous Lotus Pavilion, this was the only one she found tolerable, as seeing a person learn always brought a smile to her face. Occasionally, someone even happened to ask a good question, letting her lecture about something outside of the narrow confines of what was prescribed by the sect Elders.
"When the father of modern cultivation Gu Lingtian rebelled against the Heavenly rule", Qian Shanyi said, "He sought justice for many, but instead of responding to his challenge, the Heavens barred their front doors. But there were twelve other ways into heaven, and he would seek out every one of them."
She paused, bringing a cup of tea to her lips to take a sip.
"Only in one thing were the Heavens united with him: they would both rather see the world cracked in half than accept defeat", she continued, "To lock the first two gates, the deities made the suns set and never rise, and shattered the moons into a rain of stone and dust. Not giving up, Gu Lingtian traveled the world, from the northern oceans, to eastern jungles, and even dug deep into the earth, but all the paths spoken of in legend broke at his touch. In the south, he stared into a candle flame for seven weeks without blinking once, but when he comprehended its truth, Heavens extinguished all fire in the entire world lest he find his way in. In the west, he forged a gate out of the purest metals from the mines of Kunlun, but when it opened, everything within a dozen kilometers was obliterated by a fiery light. When he painted a bridge out of his familial love, Heavens erased his family, and made it so that he was an orphan all along. He studied the flows of the written word, gathered every Queqiao bird in the world, and even descended down into the Netherworld in desperation to force the demons to help, but everywhere he went, Heavens were a step ahead of him."
The youngest disciples listened in rapt attention, while doubt filled the eyes of the older ones at the fanciful tales. They would learn to trust the wisdom of the youth, in time.
"Finally, he forged a personal invitation from the Heavenly Emperor, and for a brief moment, he stepped into Heaven - but immediately, he was thrown back down to Earth," she continued, "Twelve were the ways to enter Heaven, and they have barred them all. Then, in a rage, he took up his sword, and cut his own, thirteenth way inside. The blood and ichor flowed in rivers, and it is said that the sounds of slaughter drove all within a hundred li into madness, but after seven days, the Heavens have bowed to his demands."
"How did he do that?" one of the older disciples asked her, "How do you just…cut a way into Heaven?"
"Nobody knows," she shrugged, "and any records of what occurred were wiped after the fact. If any remain, then perhaps only the libraries of the Imperial Palace hold them. Many have tried to find this answer, to various results. For example, it is said that all sword cultivation techniques trace their ancestry back to what he did back then - but how much stock to put into this, I could not say."
"But why did he rebel?" asked the outer disciple who brought up the topic. She didn't remember his name. Li-something?
"Heavens demanded strict obedience to their unjust laws," she responded, "among them, they only allowed a select few 'pure' bloodlines to cultivate. Whenever anyone else would become a cultivator by chance, a heavenly tribulation would immediately strike them down. Only a lucky few could survive."
She stretched her hand out, pointing to every outer disciple in the room in turn with her tea cup.
"You should be grateful," she said, "Gu Lingtian's rebellion is the only reason any of you may become cultivators at all, no matter how slim your future chances. Of course, the Heavens still bear a grudge. To this day, the heavenly tribulations of cultivators advancing in realm are much stronger than they have been in the past. But at least now, you get to
try."
"My parents always said that the will of the cultivators is the will of the Heavens," a younger disciple piped up, "They hold its power and this is why we should serve them."
This one, she knew - Tan Lin, accepted into the sect barely a week ago. He came from a family out in the countryside, where the old ways still held purchase.
"There are some perverted cultivators who still follow Heavenly commandments, yes," she answered, "as long as it does not break any laws, the empire allows it. The path of karma, they call it, and are called karmists in turn. Their tribulations are much easier than those of orthodox cultivators, which, in their eyes, justifies the practice."
"Then why should we rebel against Heaven?"
"If you don't want to be a cultivator, then why are you here?"
"Of course I want to be a cultivator."
"Then there you go. Heavens don't want you to be one."
"I mean - " Tan Lin stumbled, but regained his composure, "I want to be a cultivator, but you said that these karmists follow Heavenly commandments, right? And if their cultivation is easier - why should we make things harder for ourselves?"
"Not everything that is easy is just."
"Why wouldn't it be? It's just the way of the world. Don't they say that the big fish always eats the small fish?"
"It would have been easy for Gu Lingtian to give up at any point on his path, for he had to fail a dozen times before succeeding once. If he did, you would have been born a slave. Would you have preferred that?"
"But he only got his way because he was stronger than the heavens."
"You think that if you are strong, then whatever you do is right?"
"I mean -", he paused, then continued, "yeah, I guess. Isn't this why cultivators cultivate?"
"Hmm, I see," Qian Shanyi tapped her cheek theatrically, then stood up, "well, why don't we see how this works? Go pick up the cleaning bucket near the door, hold it in your outstretched hands, and stand on your toes. Do this until the lesson is over."
Several other disciples laughed. Tan Lin's face grew red with embarrassment.
"What?"
She leaped through the air, faster than the eyes of the mundane disciples could follow, unsheathing her sword on the way. Tan Lin's eyes widened all too late as she landed and pressed her sword to his neck, and he scrambled back, falling on the floor. She stepped after him, keeping the sword pressed against his skin just short of drawing blood. Some scattered exclamations resounded from the other disciples, but she ignored them.
"You argue?" she raised her eyebrows mockingly, "I told you what to do. Go do it."
Sweat poured down his forehead, his eyes flickering between the sword pressed against his neck and her face. She smirked.
"Well? Go on," she said, bringing her sword away from his neck and sheathing it, and he scrambled back towards the doors, doing as he was told. She returned back to her seat and poured herself a new cup of tea.
"Tan Lin, why am I punishing you?" she asked, raising her voice to be heard clearly across the room.
He was quiet at first, and she threw a questioning glance in his direction. His face was rapidly going from shock, to fear, to embarrassment and then back.
"Because I asked too many questions?" he finally said.
"No, questions are good. The more of them, the better you will learn your lessons."
"Because I argued?"
"I do not mind it when outer disciples argue with me."
"Well, then I don't know."
"There is no reason why I am punishing you," she said, smiling, "I simply felt like it, and had a sword, while you didn't. Doesn't this feel incredibly just?"
A couple more disciples laughed at that. She glanced through the student list, noting down their names.
"What do the rest of you think?" she asked, looking around the room, "Does this feel just to you? Would you rebel, if this was your life, or perish like a dog?"
The discussion went on for a while, and she made herself another cup of tea. This was quite far from what the sect Elders wanted her to teach, but if they wanted her to speak of something different, they should have come down here themselves.
"But if to cultivate is to rebel against heavens," one of the rare girls asked, "then why do we have to follow the orders of our seniors in the sect without question? Isn't that contradictory?"
Because most cultivators are hypocrites at the best of times, she thought, but knew she couldn't say it out loud.
That would be going
too far.
"You follow the orders of your seniors because they have more experience than you," she said, falling back on that common lie, "if they tell you to do something, there is a good reason, and often it is that if you do things differently, you will die, without even being qualified to know what killed you. This is doubly true when you are working in one of our alchemical workshops, or in the herb gardens."
The lesson moved on, back to discussing history. She ended it when she saw Tan Lin's hands start to give out from pain and exhaustion.
"Tan Lin, you are free from your duties for the rest of the day," she said, packing up her tea set into it's lacquered wooden box, "Feel free to visit the outer sect library to relax. Those of you who have laughed at Tan Lin, you have double shifts for the next three weeks as punishment. Maybe that will make the actual lesson stick."
Chapter 1: Cure Melon Head With A Pile Of Riches
"Ugh…what the fuck happened to me," Qiant Shanyi groaned, blearily opening one of her eyes. The other one was glued shut by blood.
Her entire body was throbbing with pain. As her blurry vision slowly came into focus, she saw a bright blue sky. Fighting through the pain, she turned her head to the side, trying to take a look at herself.
She was lying in a field of grass and flowers. Her entire body, from top to bottom, was covered in cuts and bruises, with her robes cut into shreds. Blood pooled in the grass around her, and stuck to her skin as she tried to sit up. Her head throbbed, and she took a moment to massage her temples.
She ran her hands over her body, checking herself over. Her face was swollen like a melon, bad enough that her second eye would not open even after she chipped the dried blood off it, but at least it was whole. It was hard to tell where bruises ended and flesh began, but at least everything was still attached. As she touched her left leg, the pain spiked, and she winced.
"Fuck…I think it's broken," she whispered. "How did I end up like this?"
She tried to cast her memories back to yesterday, and felt her head throb again. Even her memories hurt.
"Memory's fucked…" she groaned, shutting her eyes in concentration, and trying to breathe deeply. Her whole body told her she should just lie back down and fall asleep.
She ground her teeth. "No. Fuck you. Fuck
me. I need to get out of here before whoever beat me halfway to death comes back to finish their job."
She tried to put her healthy leg under her to stand up, and instead tipped over into the grass. She cried out as the pain spiked again, then scowled, and started trying to push herself back up again. Her head throbbed as she tried to recall where she was or who might have fought her.
As she waited for the pain to recede a bit, she looked down on her body again.
Looking at her shredded robes, she felt a twinge of regret: she had saved for a good five months to buy them. As she ran her hands through the fabric, she noticed that she was wearing a belt with a silver buckle, that was still intact. There was an empty sheath for her sword on the left side, and her money pouch on the right.
She opened the pouch to look through it for hints. Inside were a couple low-grade spirit stones, some silver coins, a set of keys and her sect seal. None of it jogged any of her memories.
She tried to slowly stand up again, and almost managed it, but lost her balance at the last moment as her broken leg gave out from under her. She rolled on the grass, screaming in pain.
"Damn the fucking gods!" she screamed, squeezing her eyes shut, "Fucking leg…How can I get anywhere with a broken leg?"
Use your spiritual energy to realign the bones, then put a splint on the leg. A memory floated from the depths of her consciousness, of herself a good half a decade back lecturing a younger disciple, their face full of tears, about this exact problem.
She closed her eyes again and burst into laughter.
Moron. How could you forget something this basic? You are a cultivator, so cultivate. She laid on the grass, and tried to focus, letting her breathing stabilize.
After a while, she got it. She focused on a point somewhere in her stomach, and felt her awareness expand, flooding throughout her body. She felt her blood flowing through her veins, and saw a second set of veins, filled with a different fluid - or perhaps a gas - spreading throughout her body. They shone in her awareness like the sun.
These are your meridians, filled with spiritual energy. Another memory came, this time of her teacher instructing her how to cultivate for the first time. She was so full of hope back then.
Instinctively, she ordered the spiritual energy in her body to move, and it did, heading towards her leg. It surrounded her bones, and she felt the break clearly, as if she was touching it with her fingers, and pushed on the bones to re-align them. The bone fragments snapped into place, and Qian Shanyi arched her back from the pain, but in her mind, she was laughing.
Progress. She opened her eyes.
"Alright, Shanyi," she sighed, "It's time to get up."
She put her legs under herself, and shakily stood up. Her legs felt weak, and as she rose up, for a moment her vision blacked out due to the lack of blood. Spiritual energy was circulating through her leg, holding the fragmented bone in shape, slowly draining her reserves in the process, and she knew instinctively that she could sustain this for several hours.
She smiled. She was exhausted, her stomach rumbled in hunger, her lips were dry and chapped from thirst, every single movement brought her agony and she had to fight to lift her arms, but she
was standing. From this higher vantage point, she could see that the field of grass and flowers stretched out for another twenty meters, before cutting off. All she could see was more blue sky - was she near a cliff?
She also saw her familiar sword laying out on the grass not far away from her. She smiled, walked over to it, and slid it into her sword sheath, immediately feeling safer as her hand laid down on the pommel.
Suddenly, she felt a sharp pain in her heart, and doubled over. The spiritual energy in her body went haywire, and the bone in her leg split apart again. She toppled onto the grass, gasping for air. Her heart was hammering in her chest as if she had just ran away from a pride of lions.
"Fuck me, what the hell was that?" she gasped, trying to bring her breathing and heartbeat under control. She felt a sense of dread settle over her. Was she going to die here?
She shook her head to clear it, and slowly, started putting her leg back together.
As she got up off the ground for the third time, she turned away from the cliff, and stumbled backwards in shock.
In front of her were several piles of treasures, towering over her head. Swords, decorated wooden boxes, armor, clothing, bricks of metal, hundreds of monster cores, heavenly materials and earthly treasures, everything was piled together and on top of each other. Spiritual energy was wafting off the piles in waves, dense enough to make the air shimmer faintly. Here and there, she could see bursts of flame and blocks of ice, where fire-type and water-type spiritual energy reached critical concentration. In Qian Shanyi's normal condition, it would have been impossible to miss.
"Who beats someone up and then leaves them alone in their treasury?" Qian Shanyi scratched her head.
It was not just a treasury, and she wasn't on top of any mountain. She was inside of an actual
world fragment.
Remembering the first aid lessons she herself taught, she put a crude splint on her leg, fashioned out of her sword sheath, her belt, and the remains of her robes. The air of the world fragment felt cool on her naked skin, but she decided to save the modesty for when she was in a good fighting shape.
World fragments had many names: secret realms, demiplanes, hidden worlds, extradimensional spaces, and so on. Regardless of their name and type, all of them were incredibly rare and valuable. This particular fragment was a sphere mere thirty meters in radius. This might not have seemed like much: a piece of land that large could, at most, fit a small building. But the value of a world fragment mostly came not from their size, but rather, from their isolation and their innate production of spiritual energy.
Spiritual energy was required for every aspect of cultivation. All cultivators would absorb it in order to strengthen their bodies and souls, and would expend it to execute various techniques. Refiners, alchemists and talisman experts used it to produce magical items, spirit beast trainers imbued it into their pets, and ghost cultivators required it to prolong their lives: in short, without spiritual energy, you could not cultivate.
In most of the world, spiritual energy was very diffuse. Because of this, most cultivators had to consume expensive spirit stones in order to supplement their natural spiritual energy absorption. But within the world fragments, the spiritual energy would be tens or even hundreds of times denser than the rest of the world.
As a result, practicing within a world fragment would grant ten times the results for one tenth the effort. Even though many world fragments were very small and filled with hidden dangers, cultivators and sects would fight tooth and nail for every one of them.
Even the world fragments that were too impractical for cultivation held great value because of their isolation. If the entrance into the world fragment was closed, entering would be almost impossible. No amount of heavenly and earthly treasures spent on security could compare to a world fragment when it came to keeping your secrets and treasures safe. Some could even be turned into storage treasures like cosmic rings that a cultivator could bring with them wherever they went.
This isolation made world fragments perfect for creating specialized environments: anything that happened inside would not affect the outside world, and vice-versa. This could not be replicated by any amount of protective formations. Because of this, world fragments would tend to be densely packed with practice equipment, refining workshops, treasuries, secret libraries, and so on. Of course, not even one sect in a hundred could brag about owning a world fragment large and safe enough to fit a person.
Which made the situation Qian Shanyi found herself in all the stranger. This world fragment was clearly safe and enormous, but there were no buildings, no efficient use of space, no refining facilities, no cultivators in closed door cultivation. All that was here were the treasures in the middle, literally piled together without any organization, making it impossible to find anything specific and no doubt ruining many of the items due to the variations in temperature and spiritual energy.
S
omeone was clearly using this world fragment, but the way they were using it made no sense. It was an unimaginable waste of resources.
Qian Shanyi sighed. She finished her trip around the border of the world fragment, and knelt down next to one of the piles of treasures, where she saw a small stream of water running off a Blue Tear Stone. Some water-type heavenly materials and earthly treasures would create water near themselves when exposed to spiritual energy, and Blue Tear Stone was one of them. The water was cold, and felt good on her chapped lips as she cupped her hands under the stream to drink.
Her headache went down somewhat, but she still felt doom over her head. She couldn't find the exit - that probably meant it was closed. She would need to wait until the owner came to visit, and then sneak past them, bargain with them, or try to fight them for her freedom.
"Given how badly they beat me up last time, that's not going to end up great," Qian Shanyi sighed, washing her face of blood. The rest of her body would need a proper bath, but at least she could clear up her eyes.
She stared at her reflection in the water gathered in her hands, and grit her teeth. "If I can deal with them, then I will deal. But if I can't deal, then I will fight them! And if I can't fight them, then I will die fighting them. To cultivate is to rebel against the heavens, what kind of cultivator would I be if I didn't even rebel against my jailors?"
She looked back at the pile of treasure in front of her.
"You know what, fuck whomever put me in here," she scowled, "There are bound to be medical pills here. I am taking them as recompense. I will need all the strength I can get to punch them in their face."
Her annoyance at the sheer waste only grew as she worked her way through the piles.
Initially, she was sure she could find some medical pills among the treasures. She was
kind of correct. In fact, she already found a dozen cases of pills, and put them aside. The only problem was that she couldn't identify any of the pills.
Despite her sect's focus, she wasn't an alchemist - the Elders were adamantly against her learning the practice. As a result, she didn't know any techniques to appraise medicines: the only thing she could do was sense the raw quantity of spiritual energy within the pills, and try to recognise their appearance. What she was looking for was basic medical pills that could accelerate the healing processes of her body, but what she was finding looked incredibly specialized, with massive quantities of stored spiritual energy.
It was entirely possible that some of the pills she found could instantly cure her: she just couldn't guess which ones, and taking pills randomly would be suicide.
For now, she focused on sorting the mess into several piles: pills and pastes, weaponry, armor and clothing, refining materials, talismans, books and scrolls, food and drink, and so on. Her arms felt like falling off, but she pushed through. She would keep sorting even if she had to do it with her teeth.
Of course, all of it was incredibly opulent. She could identify some things, like Ice Crystal Bars, bricks of Igneocopper, and so on, but most of it was beyond her knowledge.
Her robes were turned into a leg splint, so she put on an elegant red daoist robe she found that fit her well, with an embroidered motif of mountains in a golden thread. She was pretty sure that it was made from actual Silvered Devil Moth Silk: a heavenly refining material that would repel spiritual energy of all forms. Weaker enemy techniques would simply slide off it, and formations inscribed on the inside of the robes would keep her safe from open fires and lightning. It was more expensive by far than anything else she has owned in her life, and yet there were a good half a dozen similar robes in the pile.
Besides the robes, there was an entire
spool of this silk, hundreds of meters of it.
As some parts of the pile were frozen solid from contact with very active water-type heavenly materials and earthly treasures, Qian Shanyi took a second robe, wrapped it around a fire-type treasure, and moved it around the ice to melt it.
"This is probably the single most expensive portable heater in the city," Qian Shanyi smiled wryly.
There was no sun in the skies of the world fragment - its entire spherical border emitted diffuse light, similar to that of a bright summer day - but Shanyi felt that it took her most of the day to crudely sort through the pile. Having to stop at times to let her aching body rest surely didn't help.
At the very bottom of the pile her eyes fell on a small black bottle, with a picture of a smiling uncle on the label. She clutched it, and raised it into the air, her eyes flashing triumphantly.
"Big Mo's healing tablets! Finally, something familiar," she smiled, taking one of the tablets out of the bottle of pills. She picked up a bottle of spirit wine from her pile of food, swallowed the tablet and downed it with a swig straight from the bottle. She felt absolutely drained and wanted to go straight to sleep, but there was one last thing she had to do.
Big Mo's healing tablets were a famous brand of medicines produced by the Three Mountains sect, and distributed so widely across the cultivation world that practically everybody knew their uses. Unlike the more precise pills, they accelerated the body's overall natural recovery speed. This acceleration was not that strong, and would become irrelevant after reaching the foundation establishment stage, but could allow a refinement stage cultivator to recover from injuries in weeks instead of months.
For the best effect, Big Mo's tablets had to be supplemented by circulating your spiritual energy as the tablet dissolved. Qian Shanyi sat in a lotus position, and threw her senses inwards, circulating her spiritual energy throughout her body, making it pass through her stomach where the pill was slowly dissolving. She did her best to ignore the hunger pangs.
Suddenly, she felt her spiritual energy go out of control. A stabbing pain shot through her heart, her heartbeat accelerating. She cried as her back arched in pain, and lost consciousness.
Blood dripped from her mouth as she laid there on the grass, amid treasures fit for kings.
